ABC News Turns Lens on JHMI

By Greg RienziThe Gazette

The microscope has turned on the researcher. The Johns
Hopkins Medical Institutions will be the subject of a six-part
documentary set to air this spring on the ABC television network.
The series is intended to provide a comprehensive portrait of an
academic medical institution and to offer an intimate glimpse
inside Hopkins' own world of teaching, clinical care and
research, according to series producers.

A team of eight ABC production crews armed with digital
cameras has been granted almost unlimited access to each facility
on the East Baltimore campus for a three-month period that began
Sept. 29. In addition to filming at the schools of Medicine and
Nursing and at The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Bayview Medical
Center, production crews will follow Hopkins caregivers and
students at work in the field.

The documentary will focus on nearly every aspect of the
institutions, from the mail room to the operating room and from a
first-year medical student to Edward Miller, CEO of Johns Hopkins
Medicine and dean of the medical faculty at the School of
Medicine.

Miller said this comprehensive look at a medical campus by a
major network not only will shed light on Hopkins' role in the
world of health care but will likely alter perceptions about
academic medical institutions in general.

"Most people do not know what academic medical centers do,"
Miller said. "Some believe we care for only the most ill. Most do
not have any idea of how much research is done, how a medical
student becomes a doctor or what house officers do."

Miller said the documentary also will illustrate the daily
behind-the-scenes stories that take place in a medical
center--stories, he added, that at times portray the fragility of
life.

"The viewers will be exposed to some real-life situations
that are filled with emotions," he said. "And they are not always
pretty."

Hopkins was one of seven academic medical institutions in
the country that ABC News considered for this project.

Severn Sandt, coordinating producer of the series and a
field producer for ABC News, said the decision to film in East
Baltimore ultimately was made not just because of Hopkins'
prestigious ranking among its peer institutions but also because
of its role as a community institution engaged in urban health
issues and because of the "unprecedented access" the news
organization was offered.

For this project, ABC News has assembled a full-time crew of
about 20 producers, reporters and videographers and has been
given a production control room in the Billings Administration
Building. Sandt said the ability to move into Hopkins and immerse
themselves for three months enables ABC to document the three
missions of an academic medical center in full context.

"More typically, television takes a small subject and comes
in for a couple of days and then cuts it into a 10-minute piece,"
Sandt said. "That is not what we are doing here. We are rolling
incredible amounts of tape every day in every corner of the
institution with an eye to creating this very comprehensive
portrait."

Peter Bull, one of the series' senior producers, said the
documentary will show human stories that will both engage viewers
and bring them inside a medical center "with an immediacy and an
intensity of focus they haven't seen before."

In the ABC News production
control room in the Billings Administration Building, Peter Bull,
one of the series' senior producers, studies footage shot by one
of the eight teams of producers.

"You will not be ushered by a correspondent or reporter
through what appears on the screen," Bull said. "There will
likely be minimal narration so that there is less of a filter
from the viewer to the experience."

The documentary series, which will be shown in one-hour
installments for six consecutive weeks beginning sometime between
April and June, will be hosted by a top ABC News correspondent,
according to ABC.

The producers said that for this project they are
experimenting with new lightweight equipment to avoid the
obtrusiveness typical of documentary production. Instead of bulky
lights and sound equipment, each team is using a digital camera
the size of a standard camcorder, equipped with its own
microphone, which allows the producer operating the camera to be
a "fly on the wall."

Eight teams of two producers were assigned "beats" to cover
major facets of the medical campus. Members of each team spent
time prior to filming acquainting themselves with various Hopkins
faculty and staff to build trust, negotiate procedures and
approvals, and to become familiar with the workings of their
departments.

Crews will be shadowing individuals and conducting
one-on-one interviews as well. There are, however, no on-camera
reporters, which Bull said is very unusual for this type of
network program.

The documentary will focus in part on several individual
cases, which ABC producers hope will have some level of
resolution. For instance, within the three-month production span,
a crew will follow a patient who comes in for treatment at the
hospital and may find out if the treatment works or fails. The
camera will take the viewer into the operating room, listen in on
a doctor's consultation and stay inside the patient's room after
the nurses and doctors have left.

Production crews also will spotlight support staff, medical
students and how all facets of the medical institutions are
integrated.

Bull said this type of full-scale documentary is unique for
network television.

"It is very unusual for anybody to do a long-form series
shot in one place," Bull said. "Normally if you are doing a
series, say on medical students, you would probably get a whole
bunch of schools and it would end up as one hour [of television].
We are devoting a full six hours to just one institution."

Hopkins personnel and students are encouraged to participate
in the documentary but are not obliged to do so.

"No one will be forced to participate in this project,"
Sandt said. "If our cameras are around and they don't feel
comfortable, they should feel free to say to our camera crew, but
it has been rare that they do, that 'I would rather not be on
camera.' We can then just shoot around that person."

Janet Berg, instructor in Professional Education Programs
and Practice at the School of Nursing, said the ABC crew that
recently paid a visit to her Death and Dying course spoke with
her students before they began filming and explained what they
were doing.

That day they were shadowing Michael Carducci, assistant
professor in the Oncology Department at the School of Medicine,
who would be speaking to Berg's class. Berg said the cameras were
obvious due to the small class size, but the disruption was
minimal.

"They were very low-key," Berg said of the ABC crew, adding
that some of her students were excited about the prospect of
being on television. "But my students told me that if what they
filmed looks good, they will be proud. And if it's not good, we
are probably never going to see it."

ABC is not required to obtain written consent from faculty,
staff or students during normal work and class hours. The crews
are, however, required to get written consent from patients and
visitors to Hopkins who appear in discernible focus. And they are
not permitted to film those who cannot give informed consent,
such as psychiatric patients who might not be able to evaluate
what participation would mean.

Miller said that protecting the privacy and rights of both
personnel and patients was a major issue in terms of Hopkins'
agreeing to participate in the documentary.

"We were assured by them and our legal advisers that we
could trust them in this arena. I said something like, 'I trust
that what would be shown would be treated as though it were a
member of your own family with all the sensitivity that brings
with it,'" Miller said. "In the long run, we trusted ABC, and we
thought that we had a compelling story to tell about academic
health care centers and what they do for America. Basically, when
you get to the bottom line, I believe in the people who work here
and what they are here to do--namely, take care of patients,
teach and make new discoveries that will alleviate suffering and
prevent disease."

Judy Reitz, senior vice president for operations at The
Johns Hopkins Hospital, said what viewers will ultimately watch
will be the day-to-day workings of a hospital, both the good and
the bad.

"We have warts. We have warts 24 hours a day, seven days a
week. They will be seen," Reitz said. "But that is reality. And
the excellence of what we do so far outshines the problems that
we became convinced that the truth would prevail. And we also
developed trust in the people from ABC News, who have proven to
be true professionals."

Reitz added that she has the utmost confidence in her staff
to deal with any unanticipated event that could very well occur
during the three months of filming.

"I really know how great we are, and to be able to
demonstrate that to the world is really important because we see
ourselves as stewards of academic medicine. And if we are going
to play that advocacy role, what better opportunity than this to
show it?" Reitz said.